The Dreamer Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater: How Much is a Spin-Off Permitted? | An In-Depth but Spoiler-Free Series Review

Hello, everyone! I just finished reading Greywaren (Dreamer Trilogy, #3), and was planning to sit with my feelings towards it for a while before trying to compose them into a review of sorts but it’s all a muddled mess that I think can only be unraveled in writing. I’ll be discussing both The Raven Cycle and the Dreamer Trilogy but will mention points vaguely enough to avoid spoilers!

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Non-Spoilery Series Thoughts

Reading The Raven Cycle for the first time was such a joyful and revolutionary experience for me. I fell in love with the characters, the setting, the sometimes–respectfully–unhingedness of the plot. There’s something so raw and electric about those books. It captures these intense relationships, moody atmospheres, and somehow carries this throughline of the very obscure and the very tangible. It’s nostalgic and reticent whilst also aggressively offbeat, causing the reader to pull back and ask, “Am I understanding this correctly?” In places it seems almost silly in its strangeness but this is juxtaposed by an equally intense earnestness. It strikes a quite peculiar and a quite evocative balance in all of its paradoxes.

The Dreamer Trilogy begins about a year after The Raven Cycle ends, and while it follows one of the main characters from the original series, that is practically where the similarities end. Granted, it still has the same offbeat tone in the prose and dialogues but the mood is very different. Tumultuous adolescence, sprawling wonder, and bewildering discoveries have been traded in for a bit tenser, more mature, action-centered urban fantasy novel, packed with new perspectives in a new place.

I wholly adored the Dreamer Trilogy‘s first installment, Call Down the Hawk. The changes in pace and tone were engaging, carrying just enough from The Raven Cycle to work well as a spin-off. The world was expanded so much more, and while it referenced the previous series throughout, it didn’t use it as a crutch. It proved to work very well as the beginning of a separate story.

For me, Mister Impossible dragged and became a bit too convoluted. The many point-of-views had served the first book well because there was a clearer plotline and all who had initially seemed like unrelated characters ended up woven together nicely. Carrying into the second installment, though, the plot slackened and the book began floundering under the weight of all it had taken on. However, I thought the third act was superbly executed. It set the stage for a thrilling finale, hurling the characters into a point of no return.

When I first started Greywaren, I tore through the beginning section of the book far more quickly than I had initially expected to. It had been confirmed that it was going to be the last book in this universe, and I really wanted to savor it so I put it on pause for a little bit. The little bit turned into a lot a bit and it was several months later that I finally picked it up again and finished it fairly promptly.

It was refreshing to be thrown into the middle of the story and to be reminded how much I really love Maggie Stiefvater’s writing. The prose and tone is everything I love, and I think Greywaren is the fastest paced installment of the trilogy. Overall, I was really enjoying it.

However, as it wore on, more and more qualms started emerging.

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Let’s Talk Greywaren

One of the strong points I’ve found throughout both The Raven Cycle and the Dreamer Trilogy are the relationships of the characters and how they’ve developed and evolved throughout the books. To keep it vague, the main character was mostly checked out for a very large (very large) chunk of the book and this really set a precedent. Multiple key relationships were divided causing some level of stagnancy in the individuals.

Alongside this, some characters had their arcs completely neglected which was very unsatisfying, causing one to ask why their POVs were included at all if there was no fulfillment in the end. There were a lot of things that seemed kind of thrown together, making it come across sloppy and half-baked. Considering it’s the finale and send-off to this universe, it would seem like it would be handled and crafted with the utmost care. It just felt like it fell short in many ways.

However, I could’ve looked past a lot of this if it wasn’t for a glaring twist that seemed to come completely out of left field and negate previously established information. The book’s namesake, “Greywaren”, has been a plot point since as far back as at least the second book in The Raven Cycle. At that point, it had a pretty clear explanation for what it was that word entailed, and the series continued on, and wrapped up, and all was well and clarified and tied up neatly — just for it to be drudged back up and to have a pretty major facet of the main character be revealed in a spin-off. And not only does it kind of contradict what was established prior but there are relationship dynamics contingent on this fact that have now also been altered with little to no acknowledgement of the desecration therein.

Perhaps the development surrounding the Greywaren itself was intended from the beginning of The Raven Cycle but even if that were the case, it feels like it should’ve been revealed within that first series as opposed to tacked on in a spin-off.

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Re: Spin-offs

I’ve spent a bit of time pondering and warring with my own thoughts on this development. In this, I find myself circling back to the question of what the role of spin-offs are. Is a spin-off just a story that uses another as a springboard? Does it have the responsibility of honoring the sanctity of the original media? Or does it have the lenience to make decisions that alter how one reads the text its based on? What are the parameters in which it can reasonably operate?

As I mentioned earlier, something I really loved about the first book in the Dreamer Trilogy was that it carried some of the previous series with it (eg. relationships relevant to the main character) whilst also standing solidly on its own feet. It picked up where The Raven Cycle left off, and it was ready to take the story in a new direction — without discrediting or dismissing what came before.

However, when a choice made in a secondary place changes what a separate, complete piece of work has already established, it feels a little irreverent. And I know this probably sounds a bit dramatic but it was something that irked me to the point of almost wishing I’d never picked up the spin-off series at all. Because it’s one thing to fill in gaps or embellish a story. It’s an entirely different thing to taint the initial material with new information for merely the sake of a twist or two.

Ultimately, it’s not so much that this particular development is unbelievable (though I’m not saying it isn’t and it does seems to trivialize some previously established things which is frustrating). I suppose it was more of the principle of it that bothered me most. I know in this case that it’s all penned by the same author who has ultimate authority and the deepest understanding of the story and characters. But it feels a bit like a swindling of the reader which is not at all satisfying. And I guess, ultimately, I personally just don’t like what it means for the characters and story.

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Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

With all of that being said, though, the ending of Greywaren brought me back around to the book a little more. It tied up each individual’s storyline for the most part (sort of), and it did pay homage to the original series with cameos and full circle moments. It was heartwarming, and I enjoyed it — to some degree. I still had my apprehensions, and there are still parts of me that think I would’ve been fine just having stuck with The Raven Cycle (and Call Down the Hawk — I did really love that one). Overall, I’d say that Greywaren had instances where it really hit the mark for me (closer to the middle) and instances where it really did not (closer to the end).

In some ways, I’m glad that the door to this universe has closed. There’s nothing more troubling than the thought of your favorite characters and/or stories being befouled and/or misconstrued (even worse if it’s at the hands of the author themself). Even if I felt some things were uncharacteristic, or poor plot decisions, or anything else of the like, I’m mostly satisfied with the note it ended on. Mostly. Ish. I think I need to think about something else now.

If I find the longer I sit with this that I don’t mind so much what’s bothering me now, then I’ll count that as a real win. If not, then I’ll just pretend I never read it and dwell in my own mind’s version of things! And I can–and definitely will–always reread The Raven Cycle for many years to come.

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Please note that typically I like to let my thoughts and feelings sit before documenting them; I’m fairly certain my opinions will mellow out in a little while’s time. It’s just as I kept trying to unwrap it all in my head, it seemed like it’d be easier to make sense of my thoughts if I could get them out and read them back. If you made it through to the end here, I really appreciate it and would like to hear your thoughts!

Have you read The Raven Cycle or the Dreamer Trilogy? If so, what did you think? Do you have a preference? What’s your opinion on spin-offs? I’d love to hear your thoughts below!